Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Our ninth episode of Jormungand begins with some much-needed downtime for Koko's crew as they await their next mission, giving them the opportunity for some time at the beach and all that involves - mostly seeing how far anyone can throw Jonah and exploring the possibility of groping Valmer, however inadvisable that latter course of action might be.

As this state of relaxation continues, we get to learn a little about one of Koko's troops, Mao - the sole member of the crew with a family back at home, who is working for Koko despite telling his loved ones that he's travelling around in an official military capacity so that they don't learn the truth about what he's doing. Unfortunately for Mao, the guy's also carrying around a photograph of his family which he happily shows to Jonah - we all know that the language of film insists that such characters die a painful death at the next possible opportunity, so I guess we can pretty much write him out of this show sooner rather than later.

Anyhow, onwards to the gang's next mission, and a simple cargo drop by air in the imaginatively named Republic T (known to you and I as a former Yugoslav republic) is made vastly more difficult by the addition of some extra inventory to their shipment - a group of humanitarian doctors refused access to the country via normal means. With her hands tied, Koko has little choice but to accept this mission, doctors and all the risks they bring included, which makes for a decidedly tense landing too offload their original shipment of arms. Fraught soon switches to outright disaster as the notorious warlord of "Autonomous Area X" comes to pay a visit - and he certainly isn't turning up to exchange chit-chat with Koko....

Ignoring a horribly clumsy close to the episode (it felt like someone had forgotten to cut the music properly, leading to a horrible jump to the end credits instead) and deciding simply to live with the lazy exposition surrounding Mao (you can't make us care about him by bringing him in almost out of nowhere and telling us he has kids), this feels like it's shaping up to be really good story arc for Jormungand - its scenario and characters feel eerily genuine thanks to the arc's real-life basis, and for once the arc's major new over-the-top character works well within his role. As long as they don't jump the shark next week and gives this arc a fitting finale, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing in what direction it heads. I'm certainly looking forward to it more than Mao will be, that's for sure...